Psych2LKIT

Category: Zyprexa

Yeah, I’m writing a book on my favorite topic, a cause so crying out for coverage I can’t stand it. It’s inflammatory, political. Side effect not sickness. Something (a product) causes it. Or supposedly does. (I’m open to other theories. You know how quickly medicine changes).

The topic I wrestle (or wrestle) with the most is Tardive Dyskinesia, a side effect of antipsychotics. It’s gaining traction on Television with “The Good Wife’s” Michael J Fox’s character, Louis Canning, who has TV, or the ‘patient/perp’ storylines on “Law and Order.” TD comes up there in a clarion call crying out that for the mentally ill in the criminal justice system, justice can never be served. Well, it can get dicey out here on the outside of penal institutions as well. It’s just that no one wants to hear about it just yet.

Mentally healthy people get prescriptions for Antipsychotics. In 2015, 60 million RX’s for antipsychotics were written, (according to QuintilesIMS, a global tech and data solutions provider for the healthcare industry.

These drugs are helping, it seems, everything under the sun, from anorexia to insomnia, OCD and anxiety. Who doesn’t want to feel better, right? I take one myself.

Glowingly ‘madvertised’ on TV with enervating names that suggest Results (Rexulti) The World is Your Oyster (Geodon) Able again, (Abilify)….and that’s fine. These are good drugs and certainly an improvement over the mood stabilizers that ruined people’s kidneys. The thing is…they work so fast and so fully we forget to check the flip side. And there always is one.

If you are having uncontrollable movements and think you might be on one of these drugs….there’s finally an FDA-approved treatment for our 55 plus year old, long neglected syndrome, Tardive Dyskinesia. Another one, a second, (when it rains it pours) is supposed to be FDA-approved (or not) on August 30th.

I’m going to try one.

If YOU think you need a TD specialist, as opposed to a TD ‘Denier’ to check you out (and there are TD ‘Deniers’ out there, sad to say), here is a state-by-state link.

Hopefully, it will help you out. And yeah, I’m still bipolar…pulled out of my last ditch in March. I think DBT skills really helped. More on that later. It’s good to be back.

I used to be in radio, which is a commercial business that carefully calculates who they are trying to reach, how old they are, race, level of education, income, etc. My format, alternative, was aimed at 18-34 year olds, 60-40 men, mostly and women. At the time, I was in my thirties (I did this from 29-39). I knew as an employee, I’d age out sooner than later. When the ad department sells that Saturday Afternoon live remote from the car dealership, they don’t want to send out a 55 year old woman, I mean, not really.

The reason I bring this up in the overall discussion of why I do what I do… is I rarely blog and am even guiltier of not reading and responding to others. I hardly ever go on facebook. Twitter? Can’t be bothered, yet this is the best place to ‘reach out and touch’ someone.

Basically, I am looking to collaborate on an intellectual level with writers, bipolar so much the better. I’m in that phase of writing articles for magazines and the local newspapers (Miami Herald, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Bipolar Hope, etc.,) and try to figure out which books to write and which topics to include.

I can’t figure out if tardive dyskinesia belongs in a separate book all its’ own. What do you think?

I can’t get anyone to tell me how many of us there are.

The info I’ve dug up is of practical information to those of us who take the drugs that cause them…..those atypical antipsychotics advertised as ‘helpful for depression’ that list warnings for antidepressants so the consumer doesn’t realize they are being prescribed a cousin of Thorazine, a drug that helped a ton of people in the 52’s and emptied mental institutions. Those people could now live their lives on the outside.

The info on movement disorders caused by Reglan and antipsychotics that I can’t seem to dig up is even more interesting.

Many neuros in the field say they’ll answer questions and then blow me off.

I know why this is and want to write about it. It’s not damnning, but it’s practical knowledge we are deprived of.

I lost my grant for tardive medicine this year. It’s changed my perspective. To put it lightly.

I am just looking for feedback. But it seems like a crowded field out here. Especially when you get to the point that you are writing for all these publications demanding copy guaranteed to print….it’s hard to come back and blog, sorta.

You would never know this by my tags but packing for this trip to see my father on his farm was murder. First of all, my weight varies a great deal, largely due to my psych meds, namely clozaril. Other atypicals, like Seroquel and Zyprexa, among others, do this too. Thus, I have three sizes of clothes in my closet, and I had to FACE THE MONSTER when packing, and try them on, all while, trying not to get triggered when stuff didn’t fit. I made lists but I still spaced out and forgot to pack warm weather clothes for a heat wave in Kentucky. So we hat to hit a clothing store for some short sleeved shirts after the airport. Still, nothing I wear is ever good enough for my father, and I’m never thin enough. This is sort of why, in addition to bipolar, I have an eating disorder too. More from the farm later.